It will come as no surprise that this author is a White Suburbanite with conservative and antiquated views on many of todays social issues. If you wore a pink pussy hat to a protest, well let us just say we might not become besties.
While we probably could not come to see each others’ viewpoints on the proper scope of government’s role in our lives but we can can agree on a simple truth.
The police should not be choking people to death in the streets.
Guest Post by Southern Sage
As TBP’er’s know all too well, anger with the police among ordinary middle class Americans has been growing for years, and rightly so. Allow me to address the law enforcement people out there. I advise you to read what I have to say very carefully.
Over the past three decades American law enforcement has been deformed beyond recognition. From friendly neighborhood cop you have gone to bully boys, cowards, and thugs. Not all of you, of course. There remain many good, decent cops out there. But the number of bad ones has risen at a tremendous rate and that is a very bad thing.
Guest Post by Eric Peters
Why should it be a punishable offense to “speed”?
After all, it’s not velocity which causes harm. It’s loss of control, regardless of velocity. Loss of control can happen at any speed – and it’s by no means directly correlated with high speed. If it were, travel by air would amount to assisted suicide. Yet travel by air – at very high speed – is extremely safe.
Interestingly – if you care about saaaaaaaaaaaaafety – most accidents happen at low speeds, at below the posted speed limit. They are the result of not paying attention, following too closely.
Things which aren’t “speeding.”
Loss of control is the the thing that hurts you – or someone else – whether at 35 MPH or 350 MPH.
Loss of control is also objective fact. You either did – or you did not.
Guest Post by Walter E. Williams
Let’s throw out a few numbers so we can put in perspective the NFL players taking a knee during the playing of the national anthem. Many say they are protesting against police treatment of blacks and racial discrimination. We might ask just how much sense their protest makes.
According to “The Washington Post,” 737 people have been shot and killed by police this year in the United States. Of that number, there were 329 whites, 165 blacks, 112 Hispanics, 24 members of other races and 107 people whose race was unknown. In Illinois, home to one of our most dangerous cities — Chicago — 18 people have been shot and killed by police this year. In the city itself, police have shot and killed ten people and shot and wounded ten others. Somebody should ask the kneeling black NFL players why they are protesting this kind of killing in the Windy City and ignoring other sources of black death.
Guest Post by Eric Peters
One of the ways you know you live in a police state is when the police exempt themselves from the law and enforce made-up laws on the populace without any repercussions.
For instance, legal tender laws.
They define as legal tender “United States coins and currency” for “all debts, public charges, taxes and dues” (Federal Coinage Act of 1965).
It says so, right on the money.
Billy Spaulding of Manchester, NH discovered that this law can be ignored by the same police who issued him a ticket for violating another law.
Guest Post by Eric Peters
It used to be pretty easy to pick out the pork. If you noticed a refrigerator white Ford Crown Vic up ahead – without AARP stickers on the bumper and with a bullet-headed driver – it was time to ease off the gas and fade into the crowd. The Dodge Charger was – and still is – another car to always be suspicious of.
Both were- and still are – pretty easy to ID, especially the Vic (which almost no one except the ancient or the oinky drive) but chiefly because they are sedans and sedans have become much less common than they used to be as crossovers and SUVs have become the “car” of choice for most Americans.
And now – sadly – cops, too.
Guest Post by Eric Peters
Here’s a video documenting another case of law enforcers not enforcing the law… on law enforcers.
A man who had been issued a ticket – that is, ordered to hand over a sum of money as punishment for violating the law requiring both a front and a rear license plate – went to the local police department parking lot, where he video’d several vehicles without front license plates (and one – a Chevy Tahoe – with no license plates at all) but no tickets being handed out.
A law enforcer was present, so the man approached him to ask why he wasn’t doing anything to enforce the law which was enforced without mercy on him. As they talk, the SUV with no plates at all starts up and leaves. The law enforcer takes no action to enforce the law prohibiting the operation of a vehicle on public roads without tags. He expresses no “concern” about this “suspicious” vehicle.
Berwick, PA — A Pennsylvania father found himself under arrest after his five-year-old son — not understanding it was a Saturday — walked to school by himself.
Forty-three-year-old Jeffrey Wagner now faces a child endangerment charge for his son’s nearly two-mile walk to school amid freezing temperatures on a weekend morning, a local CBS News affiliate reports.
Wagner awoke to his son, Mitchell, insisting it was time for him to go to school, but the father explained there wasn’t school on Saturday and told him to go back to bed — then fell asleep, himself.
After Wagner dozed off — thinking the point had been made — the 5-year-old proceeded to dress himself and bundle up to walk to the bus stop. When the bus didn’t arrive, the diligent child decided to walk the two miles to get to class.
A concerned motorist spotted the boy and called police, who then picked him up — and subsequently arrested his father.
Continue reading “Father Arrested & Charged After Child Accidentally Walked to School on a Saturday”
Guest Post by Martin Armstrong
To Mr. Trump;
If you really want to demonstrate that you do stand for the all people, begin by making it clear that any police office who kills a citizen like this in North Charleston, South Carolina will no longer be tolerated. Police officer, Michael T. Slager, was arrested on a murder charge after video surfaced of him shooting eight times at 50-year-old Walter Scott as he ran away. The officer in this video does not even think twice about shooting someone in the back.
This one’s a new low, even for our times.
It was just a routine workers’ compensation fraud case for private investigator Ken Sheppard. Show up for a spot check, do some surveillance of the subject.. But on March 3, 2014, it was anything but routine for the renowned private investigator known for busting reality TV series “Bridezillas” star Anita Maxwell for insurance fraud.
On location in Montrose, California, a city with just under 20,000 residents and less than one percent of them African-American, Mr. Sheppard was conducting regular surveillance of a subject while parked in his black Chevy Tahoe.
The Tahoe Mr. Sheppard was sitting in had side and rear tinted windows and was registered and insured for 3 million dollars in policy coverage.
It’s important to note that in subsequent court documents filed in federal court, Deputy Plunkett, as he was identified, had not been called to the scene by a neighbor or any other witness. No person alerted Deputy Plunkett’s station of suspicious activity in the area. He was just there.
Guest Post by John W. Whitehead
How do you protect yourself from flying fists, choking hands, disabling electrified darts and killing bullets?
How do you defend yourself against individuals who have been indoctrinated into believing that they are superior to you, that their word is law, and that they have the power to take your life?
Most of all, how can you maintain the illusion of freedom when daily, Americans are being shot, stripped, searched, choked, beaten and tasered by police for little more than daring to frown, smile, question, challenge an order or just exist?
The short answer: you can’t.
Now for the long answer, which is far more complicated but still leaves us feeling hopeless, helpless and vulnerable to the fears, moods and misguided training of every cop on the beat.
If you ask police and their enablers what Americans should do to stay alive during encounters with law enforcement, they will tell you to comply (or die).
Continue reading “All the Ways You Can Comply and Still Die During An Encounter with Police”
As this vitriolic, unpredictable, outrageously entertaining presidential campaign enters its final stages I find myself pondering what happens next. I was reminded of the last scene in the 1972 movie, The Candidate. The movie is about a young untested non-politician candidate for U.S. Senator in California who puts his fate in the hands of a veteran political operative and overcomes a double digit polling deficit to win a huge upset victory. His entire focus during the campaign was to win. In the final scene of the movie he is standing among the celebrating campaign staffers and the fawning press corp. with a befuddled look on his face. He grabs his political consultant campaign manager and pulls him into a room. As the press break into the room he asks, “What do we do now?” The question goes unanswered and the movie ends.
The chattering class on the boob tube is enthralled and aghast at every seizure, collapse, and deplorable comment by the two most disliked presidential candidates in U.S. history. The establishment and their corporate media mouthpieces are perplexed and irate that Donald Trump has overcome their propaganda campaign to be leading in the polls with 51 days to go. He is a non-politician who was behind by double digits in the polls a month ago. He hired professional political operatives who have molded his message, while his opponent has been lying about her health, lying about selling access while Secretary of State, and denigrating blue collar middle class Americans in campaign speeches. The momentum is clearly in his favor and absent a major gaffe during the debates he could win an unlikely come from behind victory in November.
Guest Post by Eric Peters
You may recall the Catholic Church’s troubles with pedophile priests. The trouble wasn’t just that some priests had an interest in little kids. It was that the Church was interested in covering it up. One way this was done, it turned out, was to send a kid-touching priest to a new parish. One where the parishioners didn’t know about his interests – or his background.
The same rat line is in place for armed government workers (aka, cops) who abuse citizens – and the law – in the “line of duty.”
They might get fired but are often re-hired.
Just someplace else.
For example, Kurt Kezeske.
He was a Milwaukee, Wisconsin Hero Cop. Until he got caught on video blatantly lying about the events leading up to a high-speed chase that resulted in a horrible accident that almost caused the deaths of several people.
He is now a cop in the small village of Eagle, WI – about 45 minutes away.
